grad school

Especially especially if you rely on deadlines to get things done like me.

I have quite a few projects that I’m working on at any given time and I like it. It keeps me busy and prevents boredom (when you get tired/frustrated with one project, just move to a different one for a bit!)

But on every.single.project I’m currently playing the waiting game. Meaning, I’m floating in this weird space where there’s a lot that needs to get done, but I’m stuck waiting on others.

I have 3 paper drafts that need to be submitted to journals: I’m waiting on professors to give their feedback

I have a sweat wicking project: Waiting on the spinning lab (which is running behind) to finish some new yarns to test

I have a knitting project: I need help with some software and everyone who is able to help is wrapped up in other projects and does not have time right now

I have a heat spreader project: Waiting on a guy in Switzerland to get back to me on a material I need that may or may not exist

I have an energy harvesting project: Waiting on the new student to fix the code for the app so I can resume human trials

There are other deadlines, but they are too far out to be motivating.

So my current grad school work consists of bashing my head in frustration on the nearest hard object….and grumbling about the cold and rainy weather we’ve been having.

Honestly this is part of it. There’s an ebb and flow in grad school and I’m most definitely stuck in a purgatory of nothing.

It’s gotten to the point where I’m looking forward to the end of the semester so I actually have things to do….sheesh!

I wish this post were a little more upbeat but yeah….this is what’s actually going on and I like being honest. And in the spirit of being honest, this funk is really affecting my mood. I despise feeling useless and that’s all that’s going around right now. So not only am I frustrated from not having things to do, I’m also frustrated that my finances are shit (so I can’t go do fun stuff cause fun stuff costs money), and my mood was on the rebound and now I’m frustrated that I’m frustrated which in turn makes me a pretty grumpy person. And apparently a rambling person as well….

I’ve made a lot of excuses recently that have allowed me to sit on the couch and marathon Netflix while letting everything else fall to the wayside. Were the excuses valid? Of course! I’m hella tired after a 13 hr work day so of course imma sit my butt on the couch and watch trashy TV. But I was only making excuses to avoid responsibility

I don’t know about anyone else, but my world just seems to function a bit better when I have my shit together. Now let’s not go crazy and say that I do my meal prep on Sunday and laundry every day and I always remember to feed the dogs on time and the apartment is clean. By having my shit together I mean I remember to actually feed the dogs, take a shower, feed myself, realize the clean dishes actually need to be put away.

It doesn’t take much. You just gotta do it. Just a little bit. And eventually that little bit will seem smaller and smaller.

This week was terrifying and awesome and terrifying for me.

I found out that I’ve done enough research to plan for my prelim (pre-defense defense) in June! That’s a whole year earlier than I expected!

The downside is that I had to make my committee and start some paperwork.

Some people have no problem going up to others and asking questions or favors and such. I am not one of those people. It took me 4 DAYS to work up the courage to walk to two offices of professors I know (who like me and we chat on a semi-regular basis) and ask them to be on my committee. 4 DAYS Y’ALL. And even then I was definitely in a caffeine-induced stupor and making less than stellar decisions. Just to do something that took me 10 min. (In my defense, people are scary and asking people for things/help is panic-inducing)

But. Anywhoo.

It seems like my theme for this week was JUST DO IT ALREADY. Not just in academics but also in my running life <-it exists again!!!

In other news, as part of the ever challenging PhD program, I learned how to make a box.

It’s a beautiful box. Idk what to do with it. But it exists.

I’m off to figure out what I’m doing for the weekend (besides panicking)!

So this is gonna be a wordy post and one that’s a little more introspective than usual.

Luna has officially destroyed 3 beds. 2 of which are were Indy’s. #overit #fedup

A foam party is not the thing you want to come home to after a rough day. Especially when it’s the second day in a row that you come home to a foam party after a rough day. For clarity, I’m not talking about the fun foam party that’s kinda sketchy but super fun and usually hosted in clubs. I’m talking about bed foam EVERYWHERE. Seriously. Say a prayer for my vacuum cleaner.

Anyhoo

Today was not a bad day. It was a rough day. It was a why-am-i-in-grad-school day. Not just because it was hard but because it was one of those days where I wonder if I should even get a PhD.

My brain is not a ‘typical’ engineering PhD kinda brain. Nor is it a ‘typical’ science PhD kinda brain. These brains I define as: people who meticulously plan experiments to prove a hypothesis that will agree with the field standard while adding new knowledge to that field. The people I interact with on a daily basis are constantly proving new science based on old theory. They study equations and understand the theory of why ‘things’ act the way they do. They model and prove their experimental data with fundamental knowledge of whatever particular field. Which is totally how this should work!

I really really wish my brain worked like that sometimes.

Compared to said professors and students that I interact with, I’m total chaos. I make decisions based on my engineering/science common sense and gut feelings. Sometimes I go back and prove my work with math. Sometimes I meticulously plan out experiments (rarely actually). I especially don’t come up with a hypothesis in a field that follows fundamental laws and can be proved with said meticulously planned experiments and tests.

Instead, I come up with off the wall crazy ideas that may or may not work and may or may not be actual research. Sometimes I can run with them and a ‘scientific sounding’ paper comes out because I can go back and add an equation to my gut feeling. However that is a very painful and drawn out process that frustrates me and my adviser.

What usually ends up happening is I come up with a super cool thing. Companies like this thing. People like this thing. But it’s not research, it’s a prototype or demo.

Demo =/= PhD

When someone grills me on theory and math behind my work, I freeze up and end up talking a bunch of nonsense until someone (my adviser) jumps in and actually explains what I’m trying to talk about. Then a circular argument develops and the conclusion is that I need to science better.

Will my brain work in an industry job that develops cool stuff? aw hell yeah. But I honestly don’t know if I’m ‘wired’ for this whole PhD thing.

Add this version of impostor syndrome to the already pretty severe female-in-engineering/typical-grad-student impostor symptoms and my mental drug cocktail starts to make a little more sense.

Well, this wasn’t the most exciting post, but oh well. Shenanigans will return soon!

Ok I forgot how the rest of the story goes, but maybe I’ll finish it over winter break 🙂

Anyways, as aforementioned, finals are over! Undergrads are leaving the campus in droves and parking now exists! This post is just going to be all over the place and that’s cause I haven’t taken a whole lot of pictures lately

Steve informed me that he has never experienced having a real Christmas tree for the holidays! So obviously we have to go all out this year and leave our artificial tree in storage. We went to a local Xmas tree farm so we could cut our own tree! In hindsight, this was not the best idea for several reasons 1) we have 2 psychotic dogs 2) Steve is sill recovering from knee surgery 3) small children and psychotic dogs don’t mix

We managed to find Charlie Brown’s tree!

And while we seriously thought about it, I wanted Steve to have the full tree experience so we chose this guy instead

Note: We grossly underestimated the size of our apartment and picked a very fat tree. We can no longer access our office

In the research world I managed to make myself super confused, like usual, and the process of trying to un-confuse myself actually made the situation worse.

Having 4 different math-ing programs open for one problem is totally normal right?? I did eventually figure it out, but I still get kinda confused and am hoping no one asks me about how I found the solution cause I still don’t know.

In the dog world, Luna is getting bigger! And by that we mean she’s still a tiny 20 lbs. She is reaching the stage where she can still slip through the rails on our deck to escape into the wilderness, but her return trip has taken a sudden turn for the worse

*The indignant look on her face kills me 😀

I shall return soon with more of The Night Before Chistmas-University Edition